


To configure a new love in vain

by Patience_on_a_Monument



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Consensual, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Pining Katsuki Yuuri, Pining Victor Nikiforov, Sex Pollen, Supernatural Illnesses, Tragedy, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2018-10-08 15:46:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10390212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patience_on_a_Monument/pseuds/Patience_on_a_Monument
Summary: Yuuri loved Viktor when they were still clinging to childhood and absorbed him through media, with hope in his heart and a catch in his breath.Love was his greatest mistake.





	1. As a child would care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hanahaki is an extensively researched yet poorly understood phenomenon wherein a parasitic plant attaches itself to a host currently experiencing a romantic love. If the love is requited the infection passes easily with no lasting side effects, however if it is one sided the infection can form tendrils that exhibit phytomimicry, with flowers forming dependant on the individual qualities of the love and reminiscent of free living species. These flowers can then obstruct the airways from where they grow in the lungs, and depending on species and disease stage the coughing up of said flowers can cause considerable distress and damage to tissue linings. Due to the blooms purely existing as mimics of free living species, the exhibiting of poisonous flower species is not a cause for concern.
> 
> The only known cures for hanahaki are the patient's intended returning their affection and invasive surgery to remove the plant, but which shall also disrupt neurological pathways and cause the patient to lose the love they once held towards said intended partner. 
> 
> The disease is uncommon but not rare, and the medical and legal fields are making rapid headway in their approaches to this infection.

Katsuki Yuuri is twelve when he first lays eyes on Viktor Nikiforov. Yuuko is bristling with excitement beside him and trying to explain all the various accolades and trophies to his name, but Yuuri could only focus on the angel in front of him and how his hair streamed behind him in the same colour as the glittering crystals on his costume.

He never knew skating could be like that, so graceful and effortless, gliding in smooth curves of perfection. There was something transcendant about it, better than all the other skaters he'd seen and it was that moment that he decides to tell Minako that he wanted to focus on the ice rather than ballet. He enjoys his time in the studio, but he wants to know what it felt like to move like Viktor and inspire in others the awe and emotion now bubbling under his skin. 

"He's beautiful, isn't he?" gushes Yuuko, although it sounds like she was very far away. "His skating is perfect, even though he's only a few years older than me and Nishigori!" 

"Yeah", Yuuri breathes. "He's amazing." 

He spends the next couple of weeks practicing the routine with Yuuko, replacing the triples with singles and doubles while they work out the movements and trying to incorporate the brutally frank criticism from Nishigori. He watches the video religiously dozens of times, trying to find some sort of secret to the perfect angle of fingertips and sweep of legs. By the time they are happy with the result Yuuri can almost feel of some of Viktor’s confidence seep into him, and the beaming smile stretched across Yuuko’s face is infectious. He has always enjoyed skating, but now he feels more alive than he could have considered possible and fluid and weightless.

He keeps looking over the video, and the others they scrape together, cobbling together pieces of Viktor’s routines into new patterns and constantly poring over his form and memorising his movements, becoming a living shadow. It’s easier to forget his all-pervasive anxiety when he is wearing Viktor’s clothes, so to say, like he can forget it’s him out there.

Viktor soon enough is his first and foremost idol and ideal, supplanting even the Madonna herself. It feels natural.

  
  
  


Yuuri is thirteen when he realises that his admiration for Viktor wasn't limited to his skating. It was a gradual thought that niggles the back of his mind as he starts collecting images of Viktor, and as he adopts a tiny toy poodle like Viktor's dog and gifts him Viktor’s name. He first becomes actively aware of it when he is shopping online on the huge old pc in the inn, scrolling through auction sites for Russian-language magazines he can’t understand but have new posters of Viktor, not skating but casual and playful with Makkachin. 

It strikes him as unusual that he had never noticed before, but now he thinks about it he thinks of the other candid shots on his wall, of his sleeping dog and then looks back to the screen. Yuuko had giggled that he really liked Viktor, but he’s never really thought too hard about it. He buys another poster. He doesn’t think it is so unusual after all. Harmless. The boys at school are always talking about the actresses they find cute, and he’s heard plenty of girls talk about the vocalists plastered over their walls. And Viktor is more of an inspiration than he is a crush, or at most half and half, right?

  
  
  


He is fourteen when he has his first wet dream, and while he can't remember too many of the details when he wakes he can still remember snatches of silver and blue, and he can guess what the rest of the picture looked like. He is hideously embarrassed, and barricades his door until he finds his chance and sneaks through to the inn laundry during the busiest hours of dinner so he wouldn't be intercepted. His feelings for Viktor were supposed to be purer than that, he is his hero. Viktor is a perfect person and not to be sullied with dreams like this.

He stops being quite so vocal about the object of his adoration after that, to the point that those around him begin to pick up on it. Mari will nudge him in the ribs while they stand doing dishes, and give him that same sideways smirk that always telegraphed the next topic of conversation.

"So I got the deliveries in this morning, was that more poster tubes I saw? At what point do you run out of wall space and start decorating the inn?"

And Yuuri will splash water at her and try very hard to simultaneously not voice a denial he knew he couldn't defend as well as keep down the flush he felt spread from his face to shoulders.

Yuuko was beginning to fall out of practice with skating, being absorbed into teenage school life and awkward flirting with Nishigori, and even when she did bring up the topic of learning another of Viktor's routines Yuuri could do little more than blush and stutter that he needed to practice his own routines a bit more just now, thank you.

"Aw, Yuuri, but you used to be such a big fan!" she would chirp, and while it sounded innocent enough he could see something at the back of her eyes that hinted she knew more.

His crush was beginning to be a defining feature of himself, but on an increasingly personal level that his hormones were constantly taunting him with. He fills his life at home in his room with watching and admiring Viktor, and his time at the rink with emulating and analysing him and his nights with dreams and fantasies. But he is nothing if not stubborn, and he was going to meet Viktor and be his equal one day and then his feelings wouldn't be so ridiculous any more.

  
  
  


Yuuri is fifteen when he finds the first petal tucked under his pillow as he changes the sheets. It is small, white and unassuming and he brushes it into his hand and into the bin without a second thought, reaching back over his bed to shut the window.

A second petal joins it a few days later, and then after a half dozen more Yuuri catches himself in the absent thought that he didn't recognise them from the garden and he was still sleeping with the window closed.

It takes a week and a half after this for his niggling cough to bring up a petal while he was awake. He swiftly decides he must have inhaled it on his run that morning and watches it float away as he leans on his yard broom. After he hacks up his first tiny but complete creamy flower in the Ice Castle restrooms he stares at it interminably, blinking at what now was impossible to escape.

He'd heard of hanahaki, of the wasting lover's disease, seen it in films and read it in the news and heard it whispered in the corridors of school, and feels the gentle tug of recognition at the back of his mind that rapidly blossoms into a sudden understanding of the gentle tickle in the back of his throat that was now feels like it is strangling him, scratching up his oesophagus and choking out the world.

"I love Viktor," he whispers to his reflection as it stares back, pale and taut. "I am in love with Viktor Nikiforov and I'm going to die for him." Warmth spreads through his chest like honey as he realises the depth of his feelings, blatantly symbolised by the plant spreading through his lungs.

The panic hits after a few moments, but it hit hard and fast.

The first idea to present itself to his mind is that he is now on a countdown until he died, and he isn’t even going to have a chance to save himself. He can’t know how long he has left without going to a doctor and he will never be able to push through his shame to tell anyone about this, although he is aware enough to recognise that he will eventually be unable to hide what was happening. This is his own problem. His family will have to know in time - and oh no - he will have to tell Coach Celestino when he can't skate anymore and they’d only just started to get into negotiations for his scholarship-

Viktor. Would Viktor want him? No, that’s impossible. Maybe he could talk to Coach Feltsman about transferring to Russia - after all his applications hadn’t been submitted yet, and then maybe he could get to know Viktor? But Coach Feltsman didn’t train students from outside of Russia often and he was still a nobody, known only in Japan. Could he get them removed? They said surgery for hanahaki caused amnesia, could that be true? What would he forget? Would he forget Viktor? Forget skating? The two were so close for him now he could barely tell them apart any more.

He can feel the tickle and squeeze of the vines in his throat as he swallows through his shallow breaths, and he can feel the panic start to tug at the sides of his mind as he scrambles for a foothold, cheeks wet.

Breathe in, out.

These flowers are the proof of his love for Viktor. They are his, and he has to to cherish the feelings while he can. All he has to do was get better at skating soon and meet Viktor on an equal field before his lungs were too clotted with blossoms.

  
  
  


He hides it well for a several months, until he is in class trying to finalise his sports scholarship forms for Detroit and comes across a question which stops him completely.

_Where do you see yourself in five years?_

_Dead, _his mind supplies.__

Something snaps deep inside and he is suddenly drowning, the panic flooding back over him and he feels his chest tighten in the familiar pattern of a panic attack in the face of what lies before him. The short breaths through his already obstructed and constricted lungs trigger a series of hacks and retches that sends petals flowing over the hands quickly pressed to his mouth as he shakes through his coughs. He catches the attention of his classmates quickly, and the gasps and little shrieks that echo around the room just amplify his mortification until his vision shuts down and he finds himself at the nurse’s office, lying on the hard bed facing the window while his parents huddle with the nurse just outside the door.

They think he can’t hear them. Yuuri knows he shouldn’t listen in, but he does, catching nonsense snippets of questions and the fearful tone as the sound wafted through to him. Petals drift free and light through the air outside in the courtyard in a mockery of the leaden weight by his heart.

He hears the door slide open and closes his eyes, wishing the world away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so. This is mostly preamble, sorry, I'll get into my whats and wherefores soon.
> 
> I'd never encountered hanahaki before a couple of months ago and when I don't understand a thing I tend to go a bit overboard in how I do my working. And so this was born! Welcome to what the inside of my head looks like in front of a brainteaser, hopefully it will make for a reasonable read and not (just) the ramblings of a madman.
> 
> I've never done a multi-chapter before, so this will be an adventure for everybody! Excuse my formatting hiccoughs, please!


	2. All but memory will fade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri has to deal with the consequences of his disease, and his life takes a turn.

"Yuuri? Are you awake, honey?", he hears his mother call gently, more gently that he had ever heard her before. But he didn't want to be delicate, he wanted to be strong. Yuuri sighs as he rolled onto his other side to face them; a straggly inhalation and a wheezy exhale. He had known he could only fake a chest infection for so long, but he had hoped to have more time. Maybe make it through his last local competition in Japan and move to the USA before he had to face it. There was nothing they could do about it anyway. 

"Yuuri, why didn't you tell us?" His father was pinning him with a keen stare, not angry but sad and hungry for answers. "How bad would it have to get before that?"

Yuuri shakes his head and averts his eyes for a moment to breathe and collect himself, despair washing over him cold and empty. He squeezes his eyelids shut and bitterly chastises himself for thinking this was ever going to work out. Life had made a game of him, and the most he could do was play along. 

"I- I didn't want you to know. I didn't want to trouble anybody with my own problems. I can barely even recognise sometimes that this is happening, but it is my fault and I'm trying to fix it," he tells the wall, voice small and wavering. "After I go to America, I'll get better. I know what I'm doing so please don't worry."

There was a beat of silence, and then he could hear one of them sink into the rickety chair set by the bed. 

"We're going to worry anyway, because you're our son," comes the tremulous voice of his mother and he screws his eyes shut tighter, guilt fighting for space in his cluttered chest. "We want to support you and make sure you are happy and healthy and you will never be a burden. The person you love, is it a classmate? Are they also going to America? What are they like?" And after a beat his dad’s cracking voice asks, “do they know?”

"No comment," is all he can make out as his throat constricts again and he feels the tears lance his eyes. He can't let them know this one last thing, and would never survive their pity for poor naive Yuuri and his pathetic hopeless love for the world's most eligible bachelor. He can feel their concern wash over him, mixing with and compounding his anxiety as it consumes him whole. His parents don’t deserve to have to live with the knowledge he’s laying down his life for the narcissistic hope that he can get good enough to live in Viktor’s sphere before his body gives out. They don’t deserve to watch as he struggles against the betrayal his own heart has wrought. 

There’s a tiny inhalation behind him and he cringes further into a ball. His parents aren’t stupid, and his mother cleans his room and puts away his laundry. “Oh, _Yuuri_ ,” he hears his mum say, and there’s a hand on his shoulder. It’s all he needed to nudge the first tears to fall, tickling his nose as they roll across the bridge; he tries to focus on that feeling to keep him out of the impending conversation just for a little while. He can only stall for so long and he needs the momentum to make it out the other side of this conversation, so he rolls back over and into a sitting position on the edge of the hard bed. His head feels leaden as he raises his chin to meet her eyes.

“It’s Vicchan, isn’t it?” she asks, and there is a quiet grunt of realisation from his dad but his eyeline is caught on his mum's and it’s all he can do to give a mute nod and then crumple into her arms as he cries and cries until his cheeks feel raw and his breathing is strangled and rasping coughs. His mum doesn’t complain about the petals that scatter across her sweater and tangle into the knit, and his dad comes in to wrap them both up, but he can feel their own tears as they drip onto his back.

  
  
  
Two weeks later Yuuri is sitting in a sterile clinic office, kicking his heels under his chair as the doctor scrolls through his computer records to double check his results. His back still feels cool from the stethoscope, and he can feel the eyes of his parents and sister on the back of his head from where they sit in line at the back of the room. The doctor is young and frank, and Yuuri feels an ugly jealous bile pool in his torso at how carefree he looked in his good health and with the wedding band glowing on his finger. The doctor turns towards him with a smooth, sympathetic smile and Yuuri tries to keep his breakfast as his stomach flips.

“So, Katsuki-kun, are you aware of the different varieties of hanahaki, and what they mean?” He hadn’t been expecting the question, and for a second he is completely off-balance. Of course he had looked his disease up on the internet and had tried to look closer at what the flowers meant about him, about his love for Viktor, but there is only so much a layperson can tell from nondescript small white petals. He didn’t know how to show more of his lack of self-awareness to his family in the room though, so instead he shook his head, mute.

“Well, you see Yuuri, hanahaki is a very complex parasite with a very intricate relationship to it’s host – that is, you – and it involves a little hacking into your nervous system. What you feel when you inhale, what is clotting up your airflow are its flowers. It doesn’t need leaves, obviously, since it is being supplied by yourself, but it also has roots like other plants. Roots that tap into your nerves and can interact with specific cells in your brain.” Yuuri can feel his skin crawl as he becomes hyperaware of the feeling of the foreign mass in his lungs and his mind supplies a sickening faux-consciousness of the nerves at the back of his neck. He’d tried to understand what the sickness entailed and had heard bits of this before, but hearing it aloud from a professional was a completely different level of impact. 

“Does that make me feel this way then? Am I a- a puppet?” he asks to the empty space in the office. 

“No, no, Yuuri, of course not. Your own feelings came first, the hanahaki parasite just takes advantage of the connections already there. They can sometimes exacerbate the emotions attached for short periods of time, but it can’t act on pathways that aren’t there. It’s… hmm. Your body stresses itself out for a lot of reasons but also through unrequited affection, and it can decrease the efficiency of your immune system to let it infect you so thoroughly, and it’s the physiology of being in love – the cocktail of adrenaline, oxytocin, dopamine and more - that shapes your body into one that can successfully raise house it for a longer time. People in reciprocated relationships can get infected too but the parasite follows a slightly different pattern, and it’s more of a quick but very strong infection for both, and not always recognised for what it is. It’s over very fast and doesn’t flower, and is only a serious problem long-distance. Does this all make sense?”

“I don’t know. Why me?” He tries to raise his eyes from the floor, but only manages to focus on the keyboard before his eyes stick there. His breathing is slow, deep diaphragm breaths as he tries to not let himself feel the vines inside him. The doctor turns away from him, just a fraction, and Yuuri can see him worry at the ring on his finger. “Nobody really knows what governs infection rates, only that nobody is immune and it is more about how susceptible you are. The spores are widespread and you’ve likely been in contact with them before. But it wasn’t a mistake on your part, it’s just another disease you picked up by chance.” There was a long, loud sigh and it took a second for Yuuri to realise it was himself. He couldn’t completely believe it, but he had needed to hear that it wasn’t something he had invited on himself. 

“So, the flowers’ appearance is plastic, and how they present is a side-effect of the way that the parasite combs through your grandmother cells – neurons in your brain that relate to specific thoughts or concepts, like grandmas.” He catches a quick glance, a double check that he is still following. As if anything could tear his attention away. “The way they relate to the person you are in love with and the hormonal profile in your bloodstream affects the growth of the flowers. We get our meanings for regular flowers through looking at which form of hanahaki they resemble the most, and knowing which variety you have can help us understand how the plant is going to develop. Do you want to know what your flowers say, Katsuki-kun?”

He swallows thickly, and can’t help but turn around in his chair to look back at his family. They all look back at him, questioning but steady and supportive. He couldn’t take them knowing something as intimate as this, where his biology would hide nothing from them. “Could you wait outside for a bit?” he bites out, and he sees soft sombre smiles on his parents and a wary stare from his sister as they file out and he turns back to the even gaze of the doctor. He wishes he had at least caught the man’s name through his anxious buzz as he came in.

“So, Katsuki-kun, you have a variant which is comparable to white hyacinth. Hyacinths are normally associated with sportsmen, Apollo, and white hyacinths are representative of purity, loveliness and worship or admiration.” His voice stays very level, and he keeps his voice low and slow like he was worried Yuuri would bolt. “Does this confirm who you are carrying the hanahaki for? I know that this is… a delicate matter but it is also very serious that we know what we are dealing with.”

It’s all that Yuuri can do to nod quickly before he buries his face in his hands and feels the first sobs tear through him. Everything he had been told, it felt like he was just coughing up his whole heart every time one of the tiny flowers escaped him. Like he was being obvious, and there was no way he could hide it. It was all Viktor, even as his cheeks burned with the impropriety of a label of purity. He had spent far too long imagining sinking himself between shining pink lips that he felt unclean with a reminder of how Viktor should remain unsullied by his awful unclean thoughts. He was much more worthy of worship than debasement like that.

He remains huddled into himself until there is a light touch on his shoulder and he hears a quiet enquiry if he would like his family back in, managing to choke out an affirmation before he is being crowded in hugs from all sides. They stay bunched together until he quiets, but they don’t split apart to different sides of the room like before.

“There are some things we can expect now that we have more information. It’s a slow growing variety, but it has been going for some time and so is quite advanced. Our best guess is eight months at most, Katsuki-kun.”

Yuuri can feel his sister’s grip tighten on his shoulder, just past the point of painful, and his parents cling to each other in the corner of his eye. He had been expecting this, he had been having far too much trouble in practice to be able to look past the obvious conclusion that by the time he’s transferred to Detroit his breathing will likely be too degraded to make him a worthy competitor. But he’s nothing if not stubborn.

“I know I can’t get him to love me, but I want to keep them,” he announces, managing to lock with the doctor’s startled eyes as he gets the words out. He is perfectly resigned to these last few mo-

“No,” comes a sudden, stern voice from his right, and he snaps his head round to see his mother looking almost angry as she stares him down. “You are my son, Yuuri, and you are not dying for a celebrity on the other side of the world when you can be saved. I know you are in love and I know that this is very important to you, but your surviving is almost the most important when you can live to fall again, fall for someone that isn’t a futile goal.”

It feels like a physical blow, and Yuuri recoils a little from the force of it, but stands to be on even standing with her. “It’s my decision, and I want-“

“No,” she cuts him off again, looking quickly at his father for reassurance before rounding back onto him. Yuuri has a glaring thought that they had already talked this over before they got here. “You are still our son, and you are still under the age of majority. I -we- can’t allow it.” He can feel Mari looking on in confusion at his other side, and his shoulder is starting to ache from her grip.

Yuuri looks back at the doctor as his father speaks this time. “Kobayashi-sensei, I believe we are right in saying that in cases where a minor develops hanahaki for a celebrity it is common practice to refer to the parents? And that the government supports medical intervention?” It’s said calmly and with precision, like a script. Yuuri’s skin goes cold.

The doctor – Kobayashi-sensei- is solemn as he looks right at Yuuri while he answers, and it feels like Yuuri is transparent, immaterial as he replies, “yes, that is normally the procedure in cases like this.” He collapses back into his chair as Mari leans in to crush him in a hug. 

“The operation is routine but complex,” Kobayashi-sensei goes on. “It will remove the plant and the bulb of the parasite, but the roots are at this point too deeply embedded to be removed completely or without creating the potential for a lot worse damage. The connections that they have latched onto in your cortex will degrade as the roots disintegrate, removing any feelings of love associated with that person. You will still recognise them and can have other feelings concerning them, but the association to love will be broken.”

Yuuri can feel himself drain out as he slumps in his chair, feeling the knowledge of his fate seep in through his pores. There’s no fighting it – he’s not going to give up his future by running away, he can’t disappoint his family by disowning them, Coach Cialdini will not accept him in the USA for training with a terminal lung disease. He sees the rationality of it, that this way he can keep skating and meet Viktor, even if it will mean something different. He will see seventeen. He would have an opportunity to make something of his life past a pointless sacrifice to someone who would likely not ever know he existed. An offering of hyacinths to Apollo.

And yet. 

And yet he can feel his heart break in his chest at the thought of a life without loving Viktor.

  
  
  
The two months before his operation are the longest of his life, spent between soul searching as he cries into his pillow, uncontrollable rage that consumes him until his lungs seize from the force of his shouts, and a blank despondency. He had been banned from the rink after he had fainted on the ice and Yuuko had found him wheezing amongst a spread of blooms. There had been a long and very uncomfortable chat after he'd got cleaned up. He was bringing up full heads of flowers now, and while he could manage day to day life exercising was becoming exceedingly challenging.

He gradually accepted his fate, that his future in skating would be his dedication to Viktor since he would be prevented from giving his life or love. He could only hope that the love of skating he felt before he first saw Viktor would be strong enough to keep him in the sport, that he wouldn't lose that too. His parents were looking out for him, and while he couldn't look them in the eye he couldn't and wouldn't hate them for loving him. He knew that they had sent off a letter to the Nikiforov estate for help with the medical costs, and that was possibly what hurt the most; The thought that Viktor would learn his name through an invoice for hanahaki surgery, just an annoyance and never an equal. They'd said that an agent had dealt with the paperwork and while it was rare for this to happen it was not unheard of, and an expected courtesy for the "target" to help with a contribution to hospital fees. He knew it was unlikely that it went any higher than a secretary somewhere but he couldn't shake the deep down silly idea that Viktor would find out and swoop down, rescue him and then he'd fall in love, too. 

The days are punctuated by short, succinct conversations with his parents, distractions from Yuuko and Takeshi and vastly toned down exercises with Minako. His favourite moments are the sleepovers with Mari where they talk long into the night about everything and nothing and she scoots her futon up to the side of his bed to give him awkwardly angled hugs when his coughing fits start.

  
  
  
Finally the day arrives. He had spent the last two days surrounding himself in his imported magazines with their Cyrillic interviews, rewatching taped skates and generally trying to overdose on Viktor Nikiforov. He knew it wouldn't affect the outcome but he still wanted to revel in the feeling while he could. He even got halfway through writing a fan letter - something he had always lacked the courage for before - but the thought of the hypothetical reply coming back to a different him was too much.

He holds Mari's hand as long as he can before the anaesthetic drags him under, giving his parents a weak smile before his eyes flutter shut.

  
  
  
Yuuri wakes up in the same room, groggy and numb. It takes a while for everything to come back to him, and the first thing he sees enough to focus on are three fuzzy faces peering at him and asking him endless questions. He’s tired and his head hurts, so he closes his eyes and blanks them out for as long as he can while he tries to shuffle through how he feels. Starting with the easy stuff while his head is still so foggy. His chest doesn’t hurt, and while the bandaging pushes in on his chest he feels lighter and can breathe much more easily. He takes a few experimental deep breaths and revels in the freedom he feels in it, the air cool and fresh and filling him up from the roof of his mouth down all the way to his toes. He hears his family quiet down and back off, and slowly his mind comes back to him.

He thinks of Viktor, the beautiful and graceful huge silver elephant in the room. It’s a horrible, unsettling feeling that comes over him but he forces himself to face it. He still feels the love he had but it feels weaker; the surgeon had warned him that it would take a couple of days for the connections to finally come apart while the synthetic hormones they are giving him tide him over until his body figures out what’s happening and evens itself out. The admiration on a technical level is still there in full force, his feelings when he thinks of ice skating are untouched, but Viktor himself is familiar but safe, desexualised, platonic. 

He lets the tears cascade out of him, and the second he crumples he is enveloped in careful arms and encouraging sounds. He rocks and wails and mourns his loss until his chest hurts again and he almost feels like the plant is back; wishes it was.

  
  
  
Yuuri spends his rest period trying to accustom himself to the brand new inside of his head. Viktor slowly becomes a soothing though rather than the bitter association he had feared, and he thinks of him less as he gets close to being released from the hospital. His family are tactfully avoiding asking too much about his feelings, to the point of being obvious about it, and instead the doctors are the ones to pick apart and categorise his feelings through gentle but gruelling interviews.

He feels… quiet when he finally makes it back home, and immediately is back on the ice to try and centre himself. It still feels like home: he still feels like himself here.

The first night back in Yu-topia Yuuri takes all the posters down from his walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe... he. Sooo this is taking a vastly different trajectory than maybe you thought it was. And that took longer than I thought it would. 
> 
> Now with midi-chlorian science! (And I have a lot more of that.) It's not even nearly done yet! I've also got some fuddling about in the tags to get around to when I get around to it, this is going to get Complicated.


	3. Mother may I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor begins to fall.

Viktor Nikiforov was twenty six the first time he really saw Katsuki Yuuri.

It took seeing him together with Celestino Cialdini again before he put it together: the crumpled fluffy hair and glasses of the assumed fan that had walked away from him the day before, and the slicked hair and glittery costuming of the Japanese skater they had just seen choke so badly on the world stage. 

From what he could see out of the corner of his eye, Katsuki was taking the situation badly. Every time he looked over he could see the empty champagne flutes filling up the table and improving a hunched posture into a more confident stance. His coach had gone off to do the schmoozing for the both of them; Viktor could only hope that he would be back before the skater made himself ill.

He gradually found himself in a different part of the banquet hall, talking with the representative of some sports apparel line he couldn’t bring himself to remember the name of and trying to remember how he had gathered the energy for these conversations when he was new to the circuit and was enthusiastic for everything that went on in the world of figure skating. There was a holler and a whoop from across the room, and he looked across to see a glassy-eyed Katsuki Yuuri come weaving through the crowd towards him. 

Now here was something outside the norm!

The sponsor looked as confused as he did and didn’t seem too upset that the gold medallist was obviously trying to extricate himself from the conversation, before tearing his phone from his pocket and spinning round to find himself lens-to-eye with a leering world-class figure skater having a whale of a time and brandishing a bottle of brut like a trophy. 

“You think you’re a big shot, don’t you?” came the accented slur. “Too busy being perfect to remember the rest of the… the mortals. Even after I remembered you!” Katsuki announced to the phone case. Viktor winced but was enraptured by the intensity on show before him: Katsuki was so different from how he had carried himself just a short while ago. Every time he had seen him over the last few days he presented a completely different image – it was hypnotic. 

“Well, bet you can’t do this!” he cheered, before tipping his head back and managing a perfect pour into his mouth mid-high kick. It was all very impressive, Katsuki’s grin splitting his face in two as he successfully compensated for his forward lean and came back onto both feet. “You should get a bottle, it’s really good, but this one’s mine and you can’t have it.” But then he seemed to remember himself and straightened up to look Viktor in the eye. “You’re from Russia, where are the other Russians? I need to talk to your Yuri about stealing my name, ‘cause I had it first.” Viktor is surprised by how huge his eyes seem from up close, warm mahogany against the pitch of his hair and staring straight into him.

Viktor had just enough time to open his mouth to try and get a word out before Katsuki started whipping his head around to get a better look of the floor. He had spun on his heel to start careening towards Mila and Yuri before Viktor decided to follow him.

When Yuri caught sight of Katsuki he immediately bristled and came storming up to meet him, shouting about trying to maintain some pride and to use his head and coming across as a very small and angry parent before Katsuki cuts him off.

“I’m not incompetent, you know. And I’m not retiring just because you tell me to.” He may have been terribly drunk and coming off a terrible showing in the competition, but Katsuki is steely determined as he stares down the JGPF champion. Viktor was a little surprised at the insinuation that Yuri had pushed for him to retire, but not as surprised as by the tension and sudden squaring of shoulders as the two found each other in a Mexican standoff.

“You haven’t proven you’re the better Yuri yet, so we should… sort that out. Dance off.” Viktor heard a gasp from Mila next to him, and Yuri’s mouth dropped open. “You’re a skater, so you must dance. And when I beat you, you back off and stop starting fights with every Yuri you come across, it’s not nice.”

The frustration and anger seep out of Yuri as he tries to keep himself from simply exploding, and he grinds out, “you’re on, and when I win you go and find something better to do than pretending to be a skater.”

“Deal!” 

Katsuki walked back over to Viktor’s group and handed him his empty brut bottle, seeming more steady now he had a focus. “Hold this please, it’s important,” he whispered in Viktor’s ear, and then Sara had started playing some unidentifiably tinny hip hop music from her phone and they were in motion.

You would never know that Katsuki had been roaring drunk from the way he danced. He was fluid and still so precise as he moved to the beat, flowing between dance styles seamlessly - from b-boying to voguing to ballet - in the way only someone who dedicated their life to dance can. Yuri tried valiantly to keep up the pace, but even as he began to tire the beginning of a smile began to war with the façade of annoyance he kept up. Katsuki’s lust for life was infectious, and Viktor found himself succumbing without even thinking about it, creeping closer and closer as his grin grew wider and wider, until the dancing took a toll and Katsuki threw his jacket straight at the head of an ISU official in his abandon. He had never seen street dance as a valuable study for application to his performances, but when the first expanse of taut abs were revealed mid-handstand Viktor became intensely aware of breaking’s importance as a pivotal form of dance. 

Eventually Yuri tires and capitulates with a “fine, you have this one, but I’ll still beat you where it counts in the GPF,” before he skulks off to massage his bruised ego. Katsuki barely registers, only looking around dejected for a moment at being alone on the cleared floor before Christophe slinked up to his side and murmured something to him, too quiet to hear. Viktor didn’t need to be close to see how his face brightened and hear the bright, “sure, I’ll take you on, where is it?”

Chris had (found? brought?) a dancing pole. Of course. It wouldn’t be the first time that it had happened, but the audacity of setting it up at the GPF banquet staggered Viktor for a second. And then the gravity of what was happening hit like a truck as Katsuki started removing his shoes and trousers.

Katsuki was beautiful as he twirled briefly round the pole before lifting himself onto it. Viktor tried hard not to stare too openly, even with such an obvious invitation, but he was beginning to feel a hunger deep in his guts. He _wanted him_ , so badly it almost hurt. The way he kept himself up in the air with the pole clamped in strong, glorious thighs; the stretch when he held his foot by his ear which made Viktor blush so hard he had to avert his eyes; the casually confident way in which he cradled Chris against him. 

And then as he was standing on Chris, stretched out and clad only in socks and boxer briefs, light caught against skin in just the right way. There, just under his pectorals and near the full width of his chest, was a thin shining scar. Viktor had seen enough melodramatic romances to recognise what it probably meant – a hanahaki survivor. His heart broke as he tried to understand how the magnificent creature in front of him could go unnoticed and unloved; it seemed impossible. A sympathetic tightness rose up in his chest as he wondered what sort of person it would take to make such a wonderful person fall, how long ago it had been. If he could ever be trusted with the knowledge. How you summon the strength to get this far as an athlete after such serious surgery.

Along with it was a sad sort of jealousy, that Katsuki had the opportunity to fall in love even if it came to nothing. He looked back on his history in skating, his missed opportunities for love and relationships. Nothing but his sport, his art. A technically skilled automaton acting out a facsimile of life. He stared at the scar as it shone with sweat and dipped into shadow, wondering what it would be like to leave it all behind and find himself. 

Katsuki had now dismounted from Chris and swung himself off the pole, Viktor’s gaze drawn to him as though he were magnetised. There was a chuckle in the back of his throat as he watched a valiant battle with a shirt and then Katsuki Yuuri was rushing up to him half-clothed and wrapping him in a warm hug. His eyes were a little unfocused, his rediscovered glasses askew and his tie never made it back over his head and is wrapped around his head like a ridiculous bandana, but Viktor had never been more serious. Katsuki Yuuri looked up at him with his eyes full of trust and admiration and asked him to visit his house, to dance with him, and to be his coach. The want shifted subtly into need as he itched to overcome his shock and return the embrace, but then Yuuri was away and desperately searching for his trousers and leaving Viktor with a distinct sense of loss.

Then he was back and they faced off, Chris shouting over at them that he was going to record the whole thing. There wasn’t any music could make it over the noise in the hall but it didn’t matter because they were making their own and flowing through different steps. Yuuri lead them into the first steps of a Paso Doble, and they were separate and playing with closeness before breaking apart; Yuuri playing the bull to his torero as he waved the cape. Then Yuuri was holding him something crystallised in him. This was his opportunity, and he had to take it before it escaped him. It had to be Yuuri, with his bright eyes and full laughter and the way he looked at Viktor like he was an enigma. Viktor wanted to help him solve it. At some point the dance had stopped being performed for the benefit of the camera as the world around them shrank until they were the only ones left, alone in the hall and he could almost make out the music. There were warm hands on the small of his back and grazing his face, a warm body pressed against his back and a warm person echoing his laughter. 

Viktor could have stayed dancing with Yuuri until the heat death of the universe if he was permitted, but soon Coach Cialdini was back from his meeting and bearing down on them, pulling a confused looking Yuuri out of the hall amid gushing apologies and nervous laughter. 

He was left alone on the floor, but now he knew what that alone meant and it was so much worse than before.

  


The months of waiting for Yuuri to come back and find him were agonising and went simultaneously too fast and far too slow, as the days blurred into practice and the nights alone stretched beyond bearing. All his efforts to contact Yuuri came to naught, and all he could do was channel his longing into his performances and hope Yuuri would see and recognise what he was saying.

  
He did. Yuuri replied to his message, to the emotions he had poured out of himself into Stammi Vicino and there was nothing that would stop them now.

Just like that, he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're locked in now, so buckle up. 
> 
> I'm not sure if this one came out how I wanted - I've seen so many interpretations of this scene that putting it into my own words is strangely draining. 
> 
> I'm also paranoid that I've got Viktor's age wrong, please let me know if I'm an idiot!


	4. Before you leave me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri adjusts to having the spectre of his disease coaching him.

As it turns out, Yuuri is almost as ill prepared for Viktor’s arrival in his family’s onsen as he was for being the newest viral skating sensation. And yet there he is, in all his elegant and flawless glory, and Yuuri feels the impact of a lot of different reactions all at once as he loiters with his jaw dragging along the stone floor of the bathhouse.

First is the visceral shock, of incomprehension as he tries to correlate Viktor and his home being no longer separate and abstract and instead he is naked and wet and right before him in a scene that he had imagined many times before in both innocent and sinful circumstances. But Viktor should be training in St Petersburg right now, and Yuuri should be continuing trying to find his purpose in relative obscurity – that’s how this was supposed to play out. The denial and panic rolling through him is tangible and roots him to the spot, unable to formulate any response to Viktor’s ridiculous proposal. A small part of his mind is stuck on working out if he even wants an answer, after he had declared his intentions as such a statement of fact. 

Second is shame that pours out of him as he remembers how he had failed out of the Grand Prix. Not only that, Viktor had confused him for being a fan. Not only _that_ , he had then embarrassed himself yet further by daring to imitate Viktor – something that Viktor had obviously seen to prompt the pity party or whatever was going on in front of him right now. The knowledge of that triple flip so glaringly inferior in the middle of his routine mad his heart almost seize as he self-immolates in front of the master.

Third is the fan in him, giddy and excited about meeting his long-time inspiration and willing to bat aside the confused mess of Yuuri’s recent history in order to bask properly in the glory of his one-time crush and current object of admiration. This was the idol he worshipped at – a skating god come to him in a visitation. He may no longer love him, but there was no denying the truth of his art. And he was _right here_ , for Yuuri! There was a trickle of pride to accompany that thought, even though it was quickly beaten back down as his embarrassment reasserted itself.

Fourth, and by far the strongest, is a wave of empty grief that washes over him in a brutal reminder of his childhood and teenage years as he catches a glimpse of Viktor’s unmarred chest, perfect like the rest of him. It mixed with the rest of his warring emotions in a sweeping melancholia that caught in his chest like the vines of old. He wondered if he could have survived long enough to see this while he was still intact, and how he would have reacted if he was still so fearfully attracted to the man standing nude before him like a statue from antiquity. All he got instead was a hollow feeling in his heart and a slight pain in his head as he tried to find his footing. Is this what every recovering patient felt when confronted with their target, or was it just because it had been years after the effect that he finally confronted the cause? The worst question that races through his brain is whether Viktor knew the shame of his childhood infection, if he had been informed by his executor at the time or investigated since and was coming to see the mess that he had made of himself. He was never supposed to know. Yuuri needed and wanted no pity or sympathy, not from someone who had obviously never been through what he had and especially not Viktor. But there was no way Viktor would abandon his practice and talk about coaching him just for that, even if he had accidentally recently become a very high profile fan. 

Finally is a tiny spark of curiosity and expectation that tingles at the back of his skull at this turn of events, of this opportunity. Here is the man that made him fall in love and fall in love with skating, here for him. 

It is this feeling that has the lion’s share of blame in how Yuuri righted himself from his long moments of being frozen solid and then totters over to the side of the bath, his hand outstretched to the water in front of him. Viktor looks surprised for a second, like he hadn’t expected that reaction, but then wades through the water to clasp Yuuri’s hand in his own for a tremulous handshake. As though he was only just now realising that he was touching Viktor Nikiforov, Yuuri’s nerves catch back up to him with a squeak and he lets go hurriedly, letting Viktor’s hand drop back down to his side with a quiet splash. There’s the beginning of a grin creeping onto Viktor’s face as it replaces the smile Yuuri recognises from his magazine covers, and that is all the prompting Yuuri needs to stammer out a few hasty apologies and promises of hospitality before he is backing out of the room and then running all the way back to the refuge of his own room. Cocooned in his blankets and staring at his empty walls, he sits with himself and tries to figure out his own heart.

By the time he has a better grip on himself and sneaks back into the inn, Viktor is dry and clothed and asleep. Much easier to deal with. 

Then Minako sweeps in like a storm and he is forced to think about his situation again. She raves for a little about the upheaval, and how lucky Yuuri is, and then she catches herself and pulls Yuuri away a little before dropping her voice to a concerned murmur; “How are you feeling Yuuri? Are you okay with this? Given what happened, you would be well within your rights to send Viktor back to Russia with his new inspiration and get back on your feet yourself.”

It is almost too much to deal with the gear shift and the genuine worry he feels from her, and the gratitude swells in him. “I’m fine, really. Thank you.” He looks back at Viktor as he snuggles into Makkachin’s fur and feels the weight of it on his heart. “It’s strange, like an amplification of how it normally feels, like the absence of feelings has a physical presence of itself maybe? Like it’s a void at the back of my mind that doesn’t announce itself but doesn’t go away either. I’ve not really had a lot of time to accustom myself to him being here.”

“I’m sorry, Yuuri,” is all Minako manages before Viktor rouses himself and starts making himself quite thoroughly at home. He could do without the jabs, and the level of ease with which Viktor initiated contact was both confusing and almost too much for his anxiety on several occasions but he bore himself with as much decorum as he could manage through the haze of his emotions, letting out a few squawks at the most intimate touches and scooting away only when the situation necessitated. It makes his chest ache with the ghost of his disease every time.

He is never more affected than when Viktor is giving him space and they are just getting to know each other: When they are playing together with Makkachin, who Yuuri has instantly fallen for; when Viktor asks about his life then starts telling him about previous lovers but conspicuously doesn’t ask Yuuri about his own (fuelling a short-lived but intense paranoia); when Viktor is getting far too enthusiastic about the local history Yuuri stopped caring about an age ago; when Yuuri finally works up the gumption to agree to Viktor’s request to bathe together and he isn’t asked about his ugly, obvious scar that Viktor can blatantly see as they enter the water together.

The support he gets is more than he could possibly have hoped for, and he is almost overwhelmed by the love and appreciation he feels for them. With everyone coming around to his decision to let Viktor stay, he can also start to take their advice in turn: Whatever had prompted this, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for him to get his career back on track and become the skater he had always dreamed of becoming from the first time saw silver hair and ocean coloured eyes. There was no way he was missing this.

 

And then Yuri Plisetsky.

The teenager came barrelling into their fragile peace and knocked everything for six. There was a sudden hunger to every moment as they tumbled into a competition, and Yuuri was suddenly faced with the enormity of embodying of sexual and romantic love – of performing as a playboy to ooze seduction as he got what, or who, he wanted. 

“It’s impossible,” he found himself complaining to Minako the day before their hastily-organised showdown. "How am I supposed to go out there and dazzle the crowd - dazzle Viktor - if the most erotic subject I can handle is katsudon?!" He can feel the pressure surrounding him, pressing him, and it's all he can do to avoid having a full-time panic attack in the middle of the pathetic whining disaster he's on the way to becoming. He tries to look at it differently, to stop feeling sorry for himself and instead funnel his emotions into frustration and stubbornness. "The cards are stacked against me too - Yurio is coming off the back of a gold medal season, to go back to Russia with the choreography he was promised and already has, and his whole career in front of him, and Coach Feltsman plus Viktor if he wins." His voice is almost a shout. "I've flunked this season but if I lose this I have no coach and no LP and no time. I don't want it to end like this!" 

It's the first time he's made such a strong declaration about his future, and he feels it crystallise in him. Using that as a foothold he pushes on to ask what he wanted from Minako as she sits quietly in front of him, chin resting on her palm as she leans on the bar and looks him square in the eyes. 

"What are you here for, Yuuri?" she asks, a small smirk tugging at one side of her lips. "You've played parts before, even if they were sometimes couched in your own history like Lohengrin - I was never expected to pull upon personal experience of being a swan for Odette or being a doll for Swanhilda. Why is this one giving you so much bother? Is it Viktor?" 

Yuuri could only bow his head to try and hide the bitter look he could feel on his face. "It's strange trying to be alluring with him right there, when I can I can still almost make out what I used to feel for him but it's distant." There was no looking away now, as he made his request with defiance in his eyes.

"I don't have any experience of seduction but I've been seduced and lost my love, like the woman in the story, even if the circumstances are different. Could you teach me how to be her? I want her to take control of the story in a way that I wasn't able to."

He can see the pain and pride competing for Minako's expression as she leans over the bar to crush him in a supremely awkward hug that he has to stifle a chuckle at, almost missing the low "of course, honey, of course I can do that", in his ear.

 

It's a too-long night and a too-short day before the Onsen on Ice competition is over. Yuuri goes to bed thinking of the indecipherable ambience surrounding Viktor as they ate their victory katsudon and his promises of gruelling practices to come: His hopes for this upcoming season lull him into an easy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're into uncharted waters here folks, so all hands on deck.
> 
> It's going to be mostly vignettes I think, picking up at the important bits. These chapter lengths are varying massively, whoops, but this one was pretty strange to write considering where everyone in it is at and to get us to where I want to be.


	5. The love I came here for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything calmly and gracefully begins to break apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you buses for giving me the time to write this.

If he was pressed, Viktor could have been made to admit that his first few months in the presence of Katsuki Yuuri had not exactly gone how he had imagined them to.

Now that his coaching of Yuuri was secured and Eros was coming along well -even if it was frustratingly food-based- he had thought that himself and Yuuri would get to know each other in a more relaxed environment. Yuuri had relaxed around him somewhat, and was more accepting of casual touches, but his attempts to be more forward and left the man looking somewhat stricken rather than the blushing flustered flailing he had originally witnessed or the resurrection of the confident minx he had danced with at the banquet.

Katsuki Yuuri was a confounding creature. There were times when he could feel the competitive flame burst into life in the soul beside him, times when Yuuri coiled so far into himself in his self-flagellation he seemed to think he could will himself out of existence. Beyond even that, he seemed to waver between welcoming Viktor’s touches and looking at him like a man stricken. But that was okay. He could understand that though, he could put together Yuuri’s reticence with the surgery scars he had seen glittering across that toned chest the night of the banquet, succinctly documenting a history of heartbreak and sacrifice. They never bathed together in the onsen, and changed separately in the changing rooms, and after Yuuri had spent long enough engineering such schedules for Viktor to give up trying it relaxed into an unspoken rule. Viktor could never blame him from shying away from too heavy an onslaught, and as soon as he had come to this realisation (with one hand circled around a slim ankle and another gliding down a smooth neck to encounter a rabbit-fast pulse) he had at least attempted to calm himself down. Results were mixed, but on those moments when his resolve failed and a flirtatious line or lingering touch slipped through the flicker of emotions across Yuuri’s face never lingered on any one feeling for him to get any sort of grasp on whether he was making headway or was making a massive nuisance of himself. He really hoped he wasn’t making a nuisance of himself.

It was easy to talk about his old home here with Yuuri, and as he sat and breathed the salt air and listened to the soft yet abrasive calls of the gulls he felt the nerves and second guesses unravel themselves in his chest. The silence was more comfortable between them than it had been since he arrived here - since he had been tipsy and panting and clutching Yuuri's elbows as they both recovered from their dance together and fell into beautiful wide eyes.

Yuuri seemed to feel it too, closing his eyes and letting out a long, measured sigh as he tipped his head forward and settled on the sandbank. The tension remained in his shoulders but he had visibly settled, and the sight gave Viktor a boost of strength. Maybe he wasn't unwelcome - a spur of the moment drunken invitation Yuuri was learning to live with rather than the long-awaited missing puzzle piece to complete Yuuri's life that Yuuri was to his.

There was a horrible, crushing moment the day before where he thought he had ruined everything. A regular day of trying to wean Yuuri into red-bloodedness, the comfort of routine, a careless comment about remembering past lovers. 

He would never know what he had expected the response to be, or how he could have forgotten where he was and who he was talking to. He could have handled sass, anger or insults. What he could never have prepared for was the way that Yuuri immediately folded in on himself and took his lower lip between his teeth as his eyes fell and glazed over. The change in composure was like the flick of a light switch; immediately and obviously Yuuri turned himself off. There were no shoulder-shaking sobs, no vocalisation, no rebuking look. He just sucked in one great, stuttering, heaving breath then slowly and mournfully skated to the exit of the rink, packed up his things and left with Viktor rooted to the spot with the gravity of his fuck up.

He had known better than that, he had _known_ that Yuuri had a bad past with love, and yet he had still jammed his foot so far down his throat it may never be removed.

He was a bad coach, a terrible suitor and an even worse friend. If they had even been that.

Yuuri had avoided him the rest of the day. Not the quick, frenzied escapes of his initial time at the inn but a slow, drained avoidance and shuffled passes when he wasn’t holed up in his room. It was all Viktor could do to not drown in the guilt and go crawling on his belly up to Yuuri’s door to beg forgiveness for his idiocy, but he could recognise a need for space when he saw it. He saw his own viscous loneliness reflected back at him.

When the next morning had Yuuri entrenched in his room, Viktor had resolved on an intervention to clear the air and work through whatever memories Yuuri was stuck in before he suffocated under their weight.

And now they were here in the fresh spring morning, pleasantly silent but both knowing there was only so long before they had to either face the elephant in the room or sweep it under a large but rapidly fraying carpet.

Yuuri curled in on himself, as if to comfort himself through a hug to his knees as much as it is a protective move. The atmosphere subtly shifted from peaceful to expectant. 

“I - I dont really do interpersonal relationships. I guess a lot of the time I don't really do, em, people, not in a normal way. I get too into my own head and project my feelings onto others, make little things into big things. And it really hurt me when I was younger.”

Viktor was momentarily off guard by the sudden trajectory, but he sparked to attention with the goal of hearing and internalising as much of Yuuri's quiet speech into his kneecaps, in sudden competition with the lap of waves and calls of gulls. 

Yuuri pulled his knees further up to brush his lips. 

“I managed to convince myself that I lo-,” Yuuri cut himself off with a flinch and cast a hasty glance to Viktor. They shared eye contact for a split second before Yuuri buried his face into his legs and Viktor was left to try and decode the look of alarm, shame and pain that he had seen. All decorated by the sweetest faint blush, and he immediately cursed himself out at being distracted by superficiality at such a crucial moment. 

He pulled himself up as Yuuri cleared his throat, rallied and soldiered on. 

“I, um, I convinced myself I loved someone without ever really getting to know them. I obsessed over it all so much and it grew until I couldn't stop it any more and it hurt all the time. And I'd never even…” There was a long shudder of a breath that seemed like an exorcism of emotions, Yuuri closing his eyes as his lips twisted into a grimace. “I never gave them a chance to know me. I never gave myself a chance. I was... I was shallow, but I persuaded myself I was profound and had a handle on what I was doing.” 

The knuckles on hands gripping knees turned white, and when Viktor looked down on them in shock he was surprised again to hear a sniffle of barely-restrained emotion. Too stunned to do anything and too aware of himself to reach out to touch, Viktor grabbed the sand under his fists until it hurt.

“My family pulled me out, and I hated them for it. It took me a long time to be okay about it. And I still, I don't, I think about what could have happened if I had been more confident, or if I'd not devoted myself so much. I made such a fool of myself, but I can't seem to regret it. I was happy. And now I push people away because what if I do the same again?” By the time he had finished his voice was barely more than a whisper and there was a barely perceptible waver at the back of it. “Although you're…” he shook his head, obviously having decided against elucidation, and relaxed back into himself.

The space between them seemed to expand for a second before it shrank back down, and Viktor let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. 

“Thank you, Yuuri.” He wasn't sure if it was the right thing to say, if he should be commiserating or hugging him, but it was what he wanted most to express. Yuuri was letting him in, despite what he'd spoken of. It meant everything. He was rewarded with the smallest visible upturn of a mouth.

“So what do you want me to be to you, Yuuri? A father figure? A brother?” Little shakes of black hair and downturned eyes. Viktor felt his mouth go a little dry, “a boyfriend?”

Yuuri just sighed, and relaxed his legs down until he was sitting cross legged and could turn to face Viktor. His expression was inexplicably forlorn but hopeful as he finally raised his eyes so they met. 

“Just be Viktor. I want to know you, the real you.”

Viktor had to struggle to not let himself be overwhelmed. He had never really been accepted before - always considered too talented or too famous or too _much_ and nobody tried to look any deeper. He stood and reached out to shake on the restructuring of their relationship, and Yuuri took his hand. 

Viktor had never felt more at peace than he did on that warm beach, covered in sand, full of aching muscles with Makkachin nosing into the back of his knees and Yuuri's palm in his.

That evening Yuuri joined him in the onsen for the first time since he had arrived, nervous and shying away at first but eventually comfortable enough to unwrap his arms from where they were crossed against his chest, and though he saw Viktor's eyes dart briefly down to the scar laced across it neither of them brought it up.

  


  


The first time Viktor brought up a flower was two weeks after another trip to the beach with Makkachin, this one bright and carefree, and the first time he had heard Yuuri give a proper guffaw as they all fell into a huge dogpile together. It was a loud, harsh laugh that exhausted itself into wheezes and snorts, and he thought it was the most charming thing he had ever borne witness to.

A small yellow petal that he has to drag out of his gullet with careful fingers pit against an ever vigilant gag reflex. He knew immediately. 

Knew that the fascination at the banquet germinated into a puppy dog crush at meeting this other, new Yuuri, grew into a longing, blossomed into love of this confounding creature that teased one moment, combusted in anxiety the next. He knew he was alone in the feeling, and it tore ragged claws across his heart.

Viktor may have been impulsive and easily enthused, but he would never have claimed gold as many times in as many competitions if he was the type to buckle at the first discouragement.

He wasn't going to give up on love without a fight. Things would be different this time than it had been for Yuuri all those years ago. They had already come so far.

He just had to make Yuuri return his love, or die trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I'm not sorry.
> 
> https://youtu.be/0ruSOUiSznM


	6. I’ll gravitate towards you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri takes a step forward, although there is still a long road to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This things not dead!
> 
> I'm so sorry it took me so long - this year has been hands down the most hectic of my life and this .docx has itself been cursed on top of everything else. I'm still continuing it, and while I have no idea what my schedule will be I should hope no gaps quite as long as that again!
> 
> I'm not one hundred percent sure of this chapter, but it was always the one I was looking forward to the least as well as hitting some of the stuff I definitely had to address, eg. theme. Better to put it up now than umm and ahh over it 'til the stars turn cold.

The Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu Championship is the first hurdle they have to cross together, and the first time that Yuuri has serious second thoughts about his programme since Onsen on Ice. They’ve put so much into it now, and they’re too far into the season to back out, but that doesn’t stop him from doing some last minute panicky iPod shuffles looking for songs they could use while they ride the train down. 

He feels the pressure building up on him, like they’ll know that he fucked up as a teenager, or that he’s doing _Eros_ as part of some stupid romantic notion of justice for a fictional woman, and that he’ll die alone for being such an unlovable fuck-up. Even without going on the ice without big neon signs proclaiming his phoniness there is a constant worry about his history bleeding through into his skating, that his disconnect from the only sexual love of his life will mean his performance is compromised. The worst part about it is not being able to tell Viktor. He knows that Viktor senses it on some level, but if he started asking there is no way he would be able to stop before the whole story was out, and there is similarly no way that he would be able to look him in the eye with that knowledge so heavy between them.

He trusts Viktor, he does, but he would never survive the embarrassment. Even now the emptiness he is always conscious of lingers at the back of his mind whenever they lock eyes, burns deeper when Viktor laughs at some stupid reaction Yuuri has to a surprise or a rare joke that peeks through his trepidation. 

As they sit opposite on the train Yuuri can barely contain himself, but he tries. The atmosphere is different with Viktor than it ever was with Ciao Ciao, an aspect that he becomes gradually more aware of to the point of acute perception as they chatter softly, so softly, through the rolls and tilts of the carriage. Viktor calms him just with his presence, the quiet reassurances and gentle touches that he has come to sustain himself on, the easy familiarity that seeps into his life and into his bones. In Detroit the lead up to competition had always been Yuuri stressing himself into a ball far away from the world while Ciao Ciao stood outside his door and gently chided, a parent as much as a coach. With Viktor those barriers broke down and they weren’t coach and student but more like friends, although that definition didn’t seem entirely truthful either. There simply were, comfortable in each other’s presence even when they argued. The terrible guilt he carried almost didn’t matter when they were watching a film together on Viktor’s bed, sitting close beneath the covers, or when Viktor was pushing relentlessly at the limits of his stamina during endless repetitions of his routines. He desperately hopes that he wasn’t a mistake.

They check-in fine, unpack fine, sleep fine. Viktor is in a separate room and calls him incessantly the next morning to wake him up, even when his first two calls are met with Yuuri clumsily lifting and dropping the phone on its hook. When he finally drags himself out of his hotel room – already two espressos down – Viktor is there ready and waiting on the other side of his door with a disgustingly healthy smoothie and a smile wide as the moon. 

The void in him trembles.

There are too many people in the building, too many journalists asking about his great comeback, too many younger, fitter competitors all pressing in around him and infringing on his space. Viktor stays close to his side while they navigate the halls and Yuuri latches to his presence like a life-ring in the sea of negativity to battle the pitch and roll. Viktor Nikiforov thought that he was meant to be here, that had to be worth something. He could not fail before the season even really started.

Yuuri blinks and then he’s rink-side for Eros, trying not to let the pressures of the expectations of Viktor, his fan Minami and the entire Japanese public get to him. He focuses on blocking out all the voices around him, trying to live inside his own head but their voices are deafening. 

All he wants is to be on the other side of this godforsaken 5-minute stretch of his life, but first he has to tame his demons. He slides up to the side of the rink and steels himself, before looking up and catching Viktor’s eye, and he does not seem pleased. 

He’s ordered to turn and does, the shock ridding him of any sense of autonomy. 

There’s strong arms around him, and a warm face nestling in his neck, and it sticks in his chest as a physical pain. It’s the first time that Viktor has touched him so brazenly for a long while, and the first time ever he has dared to in such a public place. Adrenaline thrums in him and he longs to revel in it, even as the proximity scoops out a home between his lungs.  
There’s breath on his ear. “Seduce me with all you have,” comes the whisper, and his mind struggles to keep up, drowning whatever words were to follow into dull recognition. He wants to believe he could have ever been able to seduce Viktor – perfect, charming, handsome Viktor. He had wanted to so hard, so very long ago, but the ghost of the feeling is still haunting him. He remembers the longing, the beleaguering want that seeped into every facet of his life even as he is dissociated from it. Something must have brought Viktor here, caught his attention despite Yuuri’s ordinary self, and he can only hope that there is enough of whatever it was left to keep his attention now that he has it.

And there’s no better way to achieve that than doing well. He so desperately doesn’t want to lose Viktor again, not now that he’s so close. 

He takes the feeling of familiarity, the intimacy that Viktor gives far too freely and folds it into his heart, wraps it close. There’s nothing that he won’t do to make this the best performance he has ever given and give the woman in the story her ending. With every passing rendition more of himself seeps into the performance until it fits comfortably on him, and he feels it settle on him now.

Now is the time for playing a role, infusing it with just enough personal history to lend weight to his emotions. Just like Lohengrin, the Firebird, just like so many of his previous programmes. He can do this. This is home.

He leans back into the touch a little, then turns and lowers his gaze at Viktor. 

“Get ready,” he purrs, the contrasting waves of fight and flight crashing over him in response to his boldness. He can’t imagine what seducing Viktor would be like, what someone would have to be to attract someone so stunning. But he desperately wants to try and embody whatever dazzling persona that would have to be.

When he skates out, he is nervous still but the story of his song remains clear in his mind. He can do this. He’s more than his anxiety, and Viktor can see that. He’ll make it so that Viktor can never deny it.

The routine passes in a blur, like much of the rest of the day, and coming back off the ice afterwards he shakes himself to get back inside his own head. He dares a glance to Viktor and relief floods him at the quiet pride suffusing his face – at least until the tirade of improvements and nit-picks begins and he feels his confidence begin to flag.

He tries to miss as much of the event's remainder as he can get away with. It’s better that he lives in ignorance than have to deal with understanding what he is up against. It’s not a move that gets past Viktor, who in his usual and predictably good way pushes him to be better, not just as a skater but as a person. 

The gratification at having conquered a personal demon in wishing luck to his incredibly upbeat rival is short-lived however, and soon he is back at the short walk to rink-side, the cool confident personality of “Yuri on Ice” winding into his veins. He may be disparaging of his own career, but _Yuri on Ice_ is the idealised version of himself, the one Viktor came here for, the one who will rise above his own inadequacies to reach his final crescendo. It is one that he wants so desperately to be, even more than the woman in his story of the playboy. It feels like hope.

He feels it settle in him, a little ill-fitting in some places but just uses the discomfort to fuel himself. He must try, has to do his best, and he glides into his starting position with an itch in his skin. 

The drive controls him through the programme, picking him up through his mistakes when he falters and mixes with the buzzing in his head after he slams into the barrier. He can feel the eyes of everyone on him and this time he feels that he can handle it, losing himself to the swell of the music and letting it pull him along into a dance. Letting Viktor down isn’t an option but at the same time he can’t listen to his advice and take it easy here. He let _himself_ down before, and these skaters he is against are trying just as hard as he is with their eyes on the same goal.

His spirits are high when he finishes, arm out and reaching for Viktor’s approval. He knows it was flawed, but at this point he cannot being himself to care. He made it through, showed the audience just what his career in this sport meant to him. And there was Viktor. At the beginning and the end. 

The fuzzy silver-topped blur that is Viktor is standing at the exit, arms open in welcome and Yuuri’s gratitude brims and then overflows as he pushes off to race to him. He could never have imagined reimagining himself like this, and it’s all down to Viktor. He braces and jumps to him, and-

He really should have seen that coming. 

The floor of the rink is hard and grates at his already scratched skin, and he pulls himself up carefully as Viktor waffles and gesticulates beside him, carefully checking the costume over for tiny tears and missing rhinestones. His smile burns his cheeks.

____________

“My theme in this year's Grand Prix series is ‘love.’

I've been helped by many people in my competitive skating career thus far, but I haven't thought about ‘love’ for a very long time. Though I was blessed with support, I couldn't take full advantage of it. I always felt like I was fighting alone. But since Viktor showed up to be my coach, I've seen something totally different. My ‘love’ is not something simple like romantic love, but the more abstract feeling of my relationships with Viktor, my family, and my hometown. I was finally able to realize that love exists all around me. My past with love has been difficult, and confusing, and lonely, but now I understand the different forms of love and that they all are important, and all have supported me throughout my career, and that I was never alone. That love is not something to pity or fear. Viktor has been so important in both my past and my present, and always will be. I have been forever changed by that, and never want to let him go. I don't really have a name for that emotion, but I have decided to call it ‘love.’ Now that I know what love is and am stronger for it, I'll prove it to myself with a Grand Prix Final gold medal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well then.

**Author's Note:**

> Hanahaki as I can understand it in the setting of YoI, comments and criticisms welcomed.
> 
> Updates probably irregular, whenever I have a spare moment/the muses are forgiving. I will finish!


End file.
